MEGASITES OF UKRAINE

Massive 6,000-year-old settlements are revolutionizing how archaeologists understand ancient cities

- Megan Gannon

The story of urbanism traditionally begins in what is today southern Iraq. There, around 5,500 years ago, the Sumerian settlement of Uruk developed on the banks of the Euphrates River. At its peak, some 50,000 people, including nobles, artisans, merchants, and slaves, are thought to have lived within the city’s mudbrick walls, which enclosed two square miles. This large urban population existed thanks in part to an agricultural surplus managed by a centralized bureaucracy that tracked economic transactions on cuneiform tablets. But a few hundred years before Uruk emerged, some 1,700 miles to the northwest in the forest-steppe of central Ukraine, farmers with no written language were already living in settlements so large they sprawled over an area up to 1.5 square miles, and were home to perhaps as many as 20,000 people. In age and size, these so-called Trypillia megasites rivaled the earliest cities of Mesopotamia. But that’s where the similarities end.

While imposing central temple complexes anchored cities such as Uruk, a typical Trypillia megasite featured an empty space in the middle surrounded by thousands of identical homes arranged in oblong concentric rings. Archaeologists believe that the farmers who lived in these huge settlements thrived without rulers, without monuments, and without wealth disparities, all elements that were present at Uruk and other early cities. “We’re sure that they’re not cities in a classic sense,” says John Chapman, a Durham University archaeologist. “They’re probably egalitarian, but that sort of idea is really new to urban studies. Whoever heard of an urban center that’s not run by a strong hierarchy?” Understanding these contradictions offers a real challenge for archaeologists working at Trypillia sites.